My book "Visualizing Mathematics with 3D Printing" is now available on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/Visualizing-Mathematics-Printing-Henry-Segerman/dp/142142035X
Trailer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIM-IWh_-n0
Book website: http://3dprintmath.com

For the past 3 years or so, I have been writing a popular mathematics book, "Visualizing Mathematics with 3D Printing". It's an accessible introduction to some very beautiful ideas - symmetry, polyhedra, the fourth dimension, tilings, knots, surfaces and so on. The twist is that most of the figures in the book are photographs of 3D prints, almost all of which I made through Shapeways. This collects together much of my work over the past few years, and explains how they all fit together!

henryseg@Mickanator I hadn't thought about doing relief - it could be done (at exaggerated vertical scale), although it's not as obviously natural as just doing the colours. This model came out of this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01396 - which is primarily about 2D textures.

henryseg@cpabaraboo No - the minimum wall thicknesses are right around the same value for both WSF plastic and the cast metals. Particularly up at the top, the design is right up against those limits.

henryseg@cpabaraboo I just set it available in brass and bronze. I haven't tried it in these materials, but I think it should work well, since they are cast from a wax print. The stainless steel materials I think would be subject to too much distortion in the intermediate steps to work well.

henryseg@swishgirl the issue is that standard lightbulbs are big - the effect only works well with a very small light source. Everything would be very fuzzy with an ordinary lightbulb.

henryseg@Oscelot The positioning of the light is very important to get the right effect - I think it would be very difficult to get it consistently right if it was held in with rubber bands.

henryseg@Oscelot I've thought about this, but the issue is that I don't know what kind of mount to build. If there were a specific LED light design then I could design for it...

henryseg@Gregory3 Huh, I wonder if Shapeways started showing more digits recently. Odd that I would have said 4.4cm if this page says 4.44cm. In any case, the print is so flexible and springy, that a fraction of a millimeter doesn't matter much.

henryseg@Painmedicine1 I looked into this, for Shapeways' pilot project for interlinked metal parts. The problem is that the gear teeth come very close to each other, and so I suspect that they would fuse together. If there's a little fusing in plastic it's no problem to snap apart, but with metal you likely wouldn't be able to.

henryseg@joachim0 You'll want a very small LED with as wide a spread of angles as possible. I know these things exist, although I've never wired up one myself. Also you want to position the LED in the right position. I imagine this could be done with wires. If I were going to make it as a permanent fixture I would design the 3D print to include a mount that the LED can be attached to, although of course I can't do that without knowing what kind of LED to use.